– when we take painkillers, is the pain still there and we just don’t feel it anymore? Or does it actually ‘kill the pain’ completely?

Question

Asking this as I have a horrible throat infection making it incredibly painful to swallow, and therefore difficult to eat and drink. I have to stay on top of my painkillers every four hours or the pain starts to come back, I’d just love to know how this actually works.

In: 868

Answer 1

Pain is a personal experience of each person experiencing pain.

You have “sensors” in your body called nociceptors. They tend to react to certain inputs, in a way as smoke detectors work. If there is smoke, they signal alarm. They respond to various inputs (compression, as in an actual hit, if I hit you), heat, cold, traction (touch) etc.

Your nervous system is a wiring system that passes through your spine, like cars on a high way. Destination? Your Operator.

So, smoke detector (nociceptors) > nerve (wire) > spine (high way) > brain (Operator).

Now, pain is a sensation you experience if Operator deems signal too loud for what’s normal, and what its used to feel/hear. It then uses previous experiences, the signal strength (how loud your smoke detector yells) and interprets what’s going on: that something dangerous happened. Operator is also responsible for an action as a response: like jerking your hand away from fire, because skin got burned.

Now, each pain drug have their own method of working.

1) Blocking nociceptors from triggering (like a plastic bag over a smoke detector) by attaching to them like Lego. No other piece can then be attached to them any more. See point 3.

2) Blocking wires from transmitting. Like epidural that blocks your spine (high way) from passing the signal on.

3) Removing source of pain. Inflammation creates chemical things that attach to nociceptors like Lego. Your Operator doesn’t really know if something is inflamed without those chemicals. Some drugs remove Inflammation, and with that the chemicals that trigger nociceptors (smoke alarm).

4) Some block your Operator from knowing anything is up. No signal gets through to it, so as far as Operator is concerned, everything is peachy.

I’m sure there is at least one pain scientist and a chemist that can correct me here 😀